Producing Gasoline With Metabolically-Engineered Microorganisms 233
An anonymous reader writes "For many decades, we have been relying on fossil resources to produce liquid fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and many industrial and consumer chemicals for daily use. However, increasing strains on natural resources as well as environmental issues including global warming have triggered a strong interest in developing sustainable ways to obtain fuels and chemicals. A Korean research team led by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) reported, for the first time, the development of a novel strategy for microbial gasoline production through metabolic engineering of E. coli."
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
The carbon released by burning this gasoline would have been pulled out of the atmosphere by the bacteria- making the process carbon neutral. The problem with fossil fuels is that you're taking carbon that sitting quietly underground and putting it into the atmosphere.
So what? (Score:5, Informative)
We can already make Butanol, a 1:1 replacement for gasoline, via the ABE process. The feedstock is any organic material. But we can't actually buy any, because Gevo and Butamax (a holding company owned by BP and Dupont) are fighting over the patents — which should have failed the test for obviousness.
Why would this process wind up any different?
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
you're taking carbon that [was] sitting quietly underground
A fact that has always given me mild amusement. Our current trend of releasing the CO2 from fossil fuels is just repairing the damage caused by prehistoric vegetation, which absorbed the natural CO2 from the atmosphere and replaced it with harmful oxygen [wikipedia.org].
Surely, our ethical duty is to return the Earth to its former glory!
Re:idiot (Score:3, Informative)
You need to pay this other insurance if you choose to continue to exist...
Stop being a dipwad pretending that PelosiCare is just like car insurance. It makes you look pathetic.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Informative)
Putting the gene into an organism that can survive in a range of environments which make the process commercially viable was researched at a public university and is patented by Butamax. Apparently Gevo also has some relevant patent so they have something to fight about.
Re:Defund Obamacare. (Score:4, Informative)
You do know that Social Security is completely paid for, has always been, through the soc sec trust fund (simplifying here)? The government borrows from social security! Not is it not " financially unfeasible" as you seem to think, but is't been (very) solvent for over 60 years, and with some relatively small adjustments, will be that way for ever.
But I read the rest of your nonsense, and it wouldn't surprise me if you didn't know this.
Re:Mixed Blessing (Score:4, Informative)
Hey now, /. exists entirely to argue about things there's no point in arguing about.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Informative)
obviously. H. Sapiens is a parasitic species
Well few parasitic species recognize their nature and actively try to change it....sort of like this article describes?
That's not entirely true. While few species actively recognize themselves as parasitic, there are many examples of parasitic species that adapt to their new environment in ways that are beneficial to the host species/environment. Not only are you currently crawling with species that were originally purely parasitic, you could not survive without them.
Re:This solves nothing (Score:4, Informative)
That's some pretty good delusion there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials [wikipedia.org]
Let us know when batteries get a 60x improvement in energy density.